


blood from a stone

by sunbrights



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 12:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11646771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: In his mind, when the cottage is quiet, she listens to him. She runs. She finds some unknown beach on the other side of the island, free from Monokuma and the trial and ghost of Koizumi Mahiru. She slips the noose his clan tried to tighten around her throat. She escapes him and all his stupid fucking choices.





	blood from a stone

He has to step around Koizumi’s corpse to get to the roadside door. He can’t risk stepping over her; the pool of blood around her head is still oozing wider, and his shoes are fine, white Italian leather. If they get even a smear on them, the jig is up. That shit never comes out.

Peko is the only reason he’s still spotless. She’d taken the bat before he could, cut in from behind, and now Koizumi’s blood is splattered on her instead of him, like flecks of paint on her skin. She doesn’t flinch from it, or try to wipe it away. She just leaves it, like it was meant to be there.

Half of him wants to kick through the puddle like it’s water and he’s a brat with no rain boots, until he’s just as stained as she is.

He doesn’t do that. He steps around the corpse, and jerks the door open. It’s a clear, bright day, and his eyes sting before they can adjust. Damp, salty air from the ocean scratches at his face.

He crosses the threshold, and stops.

There’s this stupid, girly ruffle on the bottom of her swimsuit. It’s tied into bows on either side of her hips. They don’t have to be bows, he assumes, a plain knot probably would have done the same job, but they are. That’s how she decided to tie them.

He keeps looking at them. 

Shit like that is exactly the sort of thing she’s always quietly gravitated toward, something his parents never quite beat out of her, no matter what they did. On anyone else it’d be borderline plain, but on her it sticks out, cute and feminine and delicate. She must have picked the swimsuit out for herself at the supermarket. He didn’t even know she had it, before today. 

She bends, and hefts Koizumi’s limp body into her arms. Blood smears on her chest and neck and biceps. It must be lukewarm by now, and thick; a coagulated clump of it sticks to her collarbone. She meets his eye over her shoulder, and stares at him expectantly.

He can’t move.

It’s not that he didn’t know there would be consequences. It’s that in the moment, when it was his anger and his grief and his revenge, the consequences didn’t matter.

She doesn’t tell him again to leave. He’s already outside. She looks at him like she’s memorizing him, eyes bright and searching, and then she sets the clean edge of her elbow against the inside of the door.

It slams in his face.

*

He leaves.

He just leaves her there.

He watches his feet to make sure they stay on the pavement. The whole thing’d be pointless if he left footprints in something as stupid as dust or dewy grass. Out here, in the sunlight, he can see better how the dirt from all these back-ass island roads has been clinging to his shoes, dark smears near the soles.

That’s the problem with white leather. It gets grimy no matter what you do. 

Souda and Hinata corner him in the parking lot outside the diner. Souda sticks his finger in his face and rants at him about a bunch of shit that doesn’t make any sense, and Hinata keeps looking at him with this pinched, confused sort of expression.

A sluggish, stupid corner of his brain realizes: they don’t know. Of course they don’t. Why would they? They’re civilians going about their day; they don’t have any reason to know when something in the underbelly has gone south.

They will know, though. Mioda and Tsumiki have beach towels and sunscreen, when they walk up. Souda is making some kind of pathetic plea for an invitation. They’ll go to the beach house eventually, and even if Peko isn’t still there, Koizumi will be. It’ll start again. Hinata and Nanami and all the others will pick around for clues. There’ll be a trial. 

Whatever plan Peko says she has, it only ends one of two ways: either he’s dead, or she is.

He feels dizzy, like he’s been standing in the sun all day and his brain finally cooked inside his skull.

Mioda and Souda are loud enough that it gets Hinata and Tsumiki to look away from him, just for a second. He should be using this interaction to think about how best to leverage it later, that’s 101-level shit, but his head is too hazy for him to focus like that. Souda has said the word “coincidence” about four times in a row.

He can’t listen to this anymore. He can’t be here anymore. It’s like his whole body is running on autopilot, and the next time his brain checks back in, he’s already halfway back to the hotel.

It’s a ghost town. Literally: every time he wakes up in the morning and every time he comes back in the evening, he has to look at fucking Togami’s empty fucking cottage sitting across from his. It’s like it’s staring him down. It burns the back of his neck when he goes to open his door.

Togami got what was coming to him. Koizumi, too. Their mouths wrote checks their asses couldn’t cash, and they paid the price for it. That’s it. That’s the way the world’s always been for him, and that’s the way it is for all of them, now. If they can’t catch up, they’ll die, and anybody who’s taken this long to figure that out deserves what they get.

He fumbles with the lock. His keys clatter to the ground, loud in his ears.

“You’ve gotta be— _fucking_ kidding me.”

Bending down makes blood rush unsteadily to his head, and all at once it’s like the rest of his body throws in the fucking towel. His legs turn to jelly. He can’t feel his fingers. His stomach turns over, and he gulps at air to try and keep his breakfast down long enough to shove his keys in the lock.

(Damp, salty air from the ocean only makes the feeling worse.)

The door falls open, and he slams it behind him, just in time for his knees to give out. He hits his tailbone on the way down, and can’t find the clarity to care.

He stays there, for a long time.

At some point, the monitor over the window buzzes to life. Monokuma lounges in his chair, sucking on the same shitty cocktail he always is, and grins into the camera.

“A body has been discovered!”

*

She had no right to interfere.

She had _no fucking right._

All the shit from the prep work he did is still laid out on his desk. The stack of paper, the pens, all the discarded drafts of his letter to Koizumi.

(They’re crumpled and strewn in and around the trashcan; his first few tries had been aggressive, nonsensical messes. He’d let too much emotion through, both in the language and in the handwriting. It’d been obvious. Pathetic.)

He rifles through the pile, looking for anything. He doesn't know what. When he can't figure it out, he starts hurling things on the floor instead.

It was his responsibility. He had a plan, a goal, a strategy, and she had to go in and fuck everything up at the very last second.

For what?

For the clan? For duty? For the fucking noose around her fucking neck that he’s had tied to his pinky finger his entire life?

There’s nothing here. It’s all blank notebook paper and smeared ink; he doesn’t even have the stupid envelope to show for it, anymore. He doesn’t know what he expected to find, other than a record of his own bullshit, and now he can't stand looking at it.

“Goddamn— fucking— piece of— _shit!_ ” 

He drags his whole arm across the desktop. Everything scatters, the whole damn lot of it, but there’s nothing cathartic about pieces of paper floating to the floor. He kicks the leg of the desk for good measure, but there’s nothing in that either. Just noise, grating on his nerves.

Late afternoon sunlight streams in through the slats of the blinds. A glare from somewhere flickers in the corner of his eye, insistent, annoying, until he finally turns around.

His heirloom paper screen gleams at him from the corner of the cottage. Twin dragons twisted together, fangs bared, gaping jaws ready to swallow him whole. Massive. Powerful. Ancient.

His throat aches, pain like burning, like he’s swallowed molten lead.

He charges it. He flings his arm out, his knuckles collide with the wooden edge of the frame, and the whole thing just collapses, like it’s nothing. 

It _is_ nothing. It’s paper stamped with gold leaf and shoved into a frame. All that expense and history, and a couple of elaborate dragons aren't doing shit for him now. They’ve never done anything for him ever. They just stare at him, an ostentatious show of everything he’s supposed to be, and everything he isn’t.

Peko has one, too. Hers doesn’t have the same level of detail his does; it’s a tiger on a plain background, all elegant curves and empty space. It’s beautiful, but ferocious. A perfectly designed instrument of death.

He kicks the edge of the frame so that it skitters across the floor. Dirt from the bottom of his shoe marrs the delicate paper corner.

What a fucking joke.

*

The doorbell rings.

Then it rings again.

Komaeda hems and haws on his doorstep. (Whoever let him out of his makeshift jail cell is a fucking moron.) “I wonder if he’s really here,” he says, too loud to just be talking to himself. “Nidai-kun _said_ he was, but…”

The doorbell rings third time. When he still doesn’t answer, the bastard starts knocking instead. “Hey!” he shouts, the syllable drawn obnoxiously out. “Kuzuryuu-kun! Are you home? I’ve got an important message for you!”

“Get lost, asshole!” Fuyuhiko shouts back. “Unless you want me to put you in the fucking drink!”

Komaeda just laughs. “There he is. The rest of us were starting to get pretty worried, you know. I mean, up and disappearing like that, especially after what happened to Koizumi-san… People might start thinking something happened to you, too.” 

He rattles the handle. Komaeda’s not dumb enough to think the door will actually open; Fuyuhiko knows intimidation when he sees it. 

“Anyway,” he goes on. “Would you mind coming out here for a second? Monokuma’s asked everyone to gather at the airport.”

“Yeah,” Fuyuhiko answers, “I do fucking mind. Learn to take a damn hint and _fuck off._ ”

“Is that hinting? I'd hate to see what it's like when you're direct.” 

“I said fuck off!”

Komaeda isn't deterred. He never is, the creep. “I know,” he says, sounding delighted. “And I hate to insist. But, like I said, this is coming down from Monokuma himself. I’m worried there might be… consequences, if you don’t come.”

“How stupid do you think I am, motherfucker?” Fuyuhiko snarls. “I’m not fucking around. Back. _Off._ ” 

“Alright! Alright, alright. There’s no need to get so _angry_ about it…” Komaeda sighs. There’s a _thump_ when he leans back against the door. “Although, I probably should have known better than to think someone like me could fool someone like you with such a flimsy lie. After all, that’s what _your_ talent is really about.” Fuyuhiko can hear the shit-eating grin on his face. “Isn’t it?” 

He waits for an answer. Fuyuhiko won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Did you know we found footprints outside the beach house?” Komaeda asks.

Fuyuhiko clenches his jaw.

“I have to admit, it was a pretty incredible clue. We’ve taken great care to preserve them, since everyone else seems to think they must belong to the killer. There’s only so many ways out of that place, after all.” There’s an oozing quality to his voice. It makes Fuyuhiko’s skin crawl. “What do you think?” 

His heart rattles in his chest. “Why are you asking me?” he says over it. “The fuck should I care?”

Komaeda clucks his tongue. “Ah, right. How could I forget? This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” He raps his knuckles against the door, a cheerful half-tune. “I’ll leave you to it, then. See you at the trial, Kuzuryuu-kun.”

*

He tries to remember. He forces himself. He closes his eyes and puts the photo front-and-center in his mind, as stark and bright with color as it’d been that first morning he held it in his hands.

Her skin is white, drawn and drained. There’s blood on her scalp, and it sticks her bangs in a matted clump against her forehead. It’s brighter than she is, spilling from her nose and mouth, splattered down her front.

It’s her, but not her. He could never imagine an expression like that on her face, slack with pain and fear. He still can’t. Trying makes her features go vague and unfamiliar, like it’s a different girl tossed on the floor of the music room. 

Has to be. 

Must be.

His brain serves up the only actual memory it can find: her outside his dorm room the day of the entrance ceremony, with her chin high and her grin lopsided. “You better work your ass off,” she tells him. “‘Cause I’m up next, and I’m _not_ gonna go easy on you.”

She never stops giving him shit the whole day. Her smile is big. Her eyes are clear and focused.

Her skin is white.

There’s blood on her scalp.

He tastes copper. He’s biting down too hard on the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t stop himself.

Fucking coward.

_Face it._

He’s seen it before. If that bullshit game is real, he’s seen the photo already, so why _the fuck_ can he not _fucking remember?_

If it’s real, he _needs_ to remember.

He needs to know what it felt like when that bitch Satou’s skull cracked under the weight of his swing. He needs to hear her scream. He needs to watch the color drain out of her face from a hole in her fucking head. He needs to see the fear trapped on her face forever, frozen in rigor mortis, like _her,_ like his _sister,_ like _Natsumi._

Instead, he only has the sickly stink of Koizumi’s blood cooking in the hot air of the beach house, and Peko’s arm behind the bat. There’s no satisfaction in it. There’s no grim understanding of justice served. There’s just nausea, boiling, threatening the bottom of his throat.

Maybe if he remembered, it would’ve felt like it meant something.

Maybe then he could’ve done what needed to be done on his own.

Maybe then he wouldn’t have hesitated.

Maybe then—

*

The doorbell rings. “Kuzuryuu-kun.” 

It’s Nanami. He can hear her clearly through the door, almost better than Komaeda. She’s always fucking mumbling, but now suddenly she decides she wants to speak up. “I was hoping we could talk, if you have a minute.”

He has his head in his arms on the table. He’s been staring at a knot in the wood for the past fifteen minutes. He doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t ring again. She doesn’t hound him like Komaeda did. But she doesn’t leave him alone, either; her backpack scratches against the door when she sits down in front of it. “That’s okay,” she says. “I understand. You’re in a lot of pain right now… probably.”

_Probably._ She says _probably_ like she knows shit about anything. He lifts his head enough to glare at the door, and bites at his sleeve to keep his mouth shut. 

“I saw the pictures,” she says. “I’m sorry about what happened to your sister.”

Fucking Koizumi. She didn’t even have the basic decency to destroy the pictures, or at least hide them somewhere the amateur detective club wouldn’t find them. Natsumi deserves better than to have her remains plastered around like that, a piece in some stranger’s bullshit puzzle.

“But I’m not here to talk about that,” Nanami says, firmly. Brooking no argument, like he was even going to bother. “I don’t know what happened between you and Koizumi-san. I don’t know if you’re the one who killed her. But… there’s one thing I do know.” 

Nanami had barely even registered on his radar, before today. She’s a wishy-washy, air-headed wisp of a girl. But now, sitting outside his cottage talking at him through the door, she finds some kind of conviction: “This has to stop.” 

She’s dumber than he thought she was, if she thinks any of this is going to stop now that it’s been put in motion.

“I don’t want to lose anyone else. But there’s no turning away from this, you know? It happened. It happened, and now we have to move forward. Finding out who killed Koizumi-san is the only way we can do that.” 

It’s the most words he’s heard Nanami say in a row since he met her. 

“I don’t want anyone else to die,” she goes on. “I don’t think you do, either. But… nobody can do this by themselves, right? The only way we can stop more killings is if we work together, right?” 

She waits.

He doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about or who she’s talking to, bottom line.

It doesn’t stop her from trying. “... What do you think, Kuzuryuu-kun?”

She keeps waiting. She waits a long fucking time. The silence isn’t even awkward— it just is, framed by the rush of the ocean in the distance. He grinds his knuckles into the table, hard enough to hurt.

Eventually, even Nanami breaks. “I see. That’s your answer, huh?” She breathes out, slow, the same way she does everything else. He thinks maybe he hears her smiling. “It was a lot to ask this time, maybe. Thanks for listening anyway.” 

She stands up, but her voice gets closer, like she’s nose-to-nose with the door. “The class trial is going to start soon,” she tells him. “Whatever else happens… If you decide to change your mind, we’ll still be here. That’s a promise, you know?”

She walks away.

*

When they were kids, Natsumi put Peko in one of her own yukata for festival. She’d dressed Peko up like a doll, pinching and tugging and pulling until she was perfect, and then made her spin in place in the middle of her bedroom.

That memory rises to the front of his mind without any effort at all. He’d been standing in the corner. He’d complained that they were taking too long. 

It was a deep purple yukata. There’d been a pattern of delicate white birds on it, swooping up from her feet to her elbows. He remembers Peko doing an extra turn just to see the bottom skirts swirl around her ankles. 

She’d been thrilled. Excited. Delighted. For once, a little girl allowed to play dress up.

All three of them were still young enough that none of them saw the problem with it. Natsumi had posed with her, fan open dramatically over the lower half of her face, and demanded his opinion. 

“She should wear it,” he remembers saying. “It looks better than that grimy one Mitsuya gave her.”

Peko hasn’t been that girl for— years. But she’s still part of her, deep down. He knows that. He’s seen her reach trembling hands out toward stray dogs on the street, when she thinks he’s preoccupied. He’s seen the stupid little bows she tied on the bottom of her swimsuit.

He wants to remember her like that. Smiling, almost shy, face warm with eager excitement. Not stiff-backed and empty, splattered in blood with the word “tool” in her mouth.

He grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes.

No.

Shut the fuck up.

_Stop._

It’s not going to end like this. It won’t. He refuses to let it.

(The memory ends the same way they all do. His old lady found out, and nearly twisted Peko’s arm off dragging her away. He’d shouted and cried and stomped his feet, and it hadn’t changed a single damn thing.)

*

He pulls out his handbook, and swipes through the list of rules.

**Rule #8: As a reward, the surviving blackened will be forgiven of their crime and allowed to leave the island.**

Technically, he’s an accomplice. Without him, there’s no method, opportunity, or motive, and that’s half the whole fuckin’ shebang right there. He’s just as culpable; any court worth its teeth would put him away, too. 

Is there a rule for that?

If the class picks the wrong person, who gets to leave? Is it just Peko? 

… Or could it be them both?

He swipes backwards.

**Rule #7: If the blackened is not exposed, the remaining students will be executed.**

His heart hangs in his throat.

“Hey,” he says to the empty room. He sounds like shit, even to himself. “Monokuma.”

It doesn’t take even a full second. There’s a flicker in his peripheral vision, and then Monokuma is just _there,_ one delicate round paw against his snout. “Didja call me?”

Fuyuhiko jumps. He can’t help it. It’s fucking _creepy._ “Can’t- Can’t you use a goddamn door?!”

“Sure,” Monokuma says, conversational. “But today’s _special._ This is the first time you’ve ever called me for anything, you know. I said to myself, I said, leap on the opportunity! It could be an emergency! Drama! A thrilling-but-adequately-foreshadowed plot twist!” He pokes at one corner of the upended screen with his foot. “PS, this place is a total pig sty. Do you have no shame? And after I went to all that trouble of putting these cottages together for you, too…”

His nails are cutting into his palms, even as short as they are. “Will you shut the fuck up for five seconds?” he grinds out. “I…I got a question for you.”

Monokuma hoists himself up onto the table with both paws, and sticks his button nose right in Fuyuhiko’s face. “Oh yeah? Does that mean you’re _finally_ ready to play with the rest of the class?”

“It’s one fuckin’ question,” Fuyuhiko snaps. “Don’t cream yourself over it.”

“Okay. So what’s the question?”

Information is the most powerful weapon he can get. Once he knows the answer, he’ll be able to plan his strategy better. He’ll know what’s the best case scenario, and what’s the worst.

Monokuma won’t lie. Not when it’s more entertaining for him to tell the truth.

All Fuyuhiko has to do is ask.

“What’s the matter?” Monokuma jeers. “Tool gotcher tongue?”

He’s being baited. He doesn’t care. The word still trips some switch in his head that makes his chest split and his ears ring. 

Monokuma’s seen everything, up till now. He knows everything that’s happened. It’s all a sick joke to him, a game, a source of twisted fucking entertainment. Fuyuhiko’s here pouring over rules, and Monokuma’s there in the background, laughing.

(He’d grinned at him like that yesterday morning, too, both paws clutched around a plain, manila envelope. “Congratulations!” he’d cooed. “You’ve earned the ending prize!”)

“Get out,” he says between his teeth.

Monokuma’s laughter soars. “Ohh _hhh_ noo _ooo._ And after I came all the way out here, too! Was it something I said?”

“I _said_ get _out._ ”

“Fine, fine. Sourpuss.” Monokuma presses both paws to his snout, like that will suppress the lilting giggle. ”Oh well. Not like it matters to me. Besides, I think you already know the answer to your little question, anyway.” He leans over the table on stubby arms. Up close, the cutesy, stylized design of his face looks dead and emotionless. “Don’t you?”

Fuyuhiko lunges at him. It’s stupid, impulsive, and pointless; Monokuma dances out of his reach and leaves him strangling empty air.

“I’m gonna do you a favor,” Monokuma tells him, picking at the shiny points of his claws, “and let that one slide. Just this once.” He tilts his head toward the door. Fuyuhiko can only see the manic left edge of his smile. “We need you at the class trial this time around if it’s gonna meet its full potential. So don’t even _think_ about trying to skip out again.”

Then he disappears. Like that, like it’s nothing. There’s no flourish or puff of smoke or slow fade-out. He’s there one second, and then not the next.

Fuyuhiko’s handbook is still face-up on the table.

**Rule #7: If the blackened is not exposed, the remaining students will be executed.**

He slaps his hand over it to turn it off. It clatters to the edge of the table, and he’s almost disappointed it doesn’t crack open against the floor.

If Saionji goes down, Peko walks free. That’s all he needs to know.

Anything else after that is just details.

*

In his mind, when the cottage is quiet, she listens to him. She runs. She finds some unknown beach on the other side of the island, free from Monokuma and the trial and ghost of Koizumi Mahiru. She slips the noose his clan tried to tighten around her throat. She escapes him and all his stupid fucking choices.

Everything after that, the hows and wheres and whats, gets hazy and unimportant. Even he’s not childish enough to think it’ll actually happen.

Peko’s yakuza, too. She won’t just roll over and accept defeat, even if he begged her to. (Even now, after he already has.) She’s been out there fighting this whole time, and what’s he been doing? Sitting around throwing a fit and making a mess, like a goddamn child.

The least he can do is pull himself out of his own ass long enough to fight alongside her.

The monitor over the window buzzes to life. Monokuma is mugging for the camera, he assumes. Fuyuhiko has his back to it.

“The hostility of fresh blood! The insanity of a contest of wits! The class trial is finally raising its curtain!”

He picks himself up, and goes.


End file.
